Happy Monday! It's July 27, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift — your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you'll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.
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In this morning's edition, we're looking at Honda's desire for a revived Crosstour, and Porsche's new round of job cuts. We'll also look at Waymo ending things with Uber, and Audi's plans for the rest of 2026.
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1st Gear: Honda's plan for an Accord crossover sounds like a revived Crosstour
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Remember the Honda Accord Crosstour? Yeah, you and about eight other people. Honda thinks the car may have just been ahead of its time, though, and now it sounds like the company wants to bring it back. From Automotive News:
Honda is considering a lifted Accord hatchback that would offer more utility, a higher driving position and cargo versatility for a sedan-like price.
The midsize model, called the "Accord SUV" in a Honda planning document, is expected to enter production in mid-2029, potentially in Marysville, Ohio, a person with knowledge of the plan told Automotive News.
The vehicle would arrive alongside a redesigned Accord sedan. Both versions of the nameplate would feature Honda's next-generation hybrid powertrain.
I had a high school classmate whose mom had a Crosstour. It sure was a car. I wonder if Honda will bring the name back, given the popularity of the similarly named Crosstrek.
2nd Gear: Porsche plans to cut 5,000 more jobs
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Porsche, as with every other Volkswagen brand, seems interested in shrinking. The company recently announced plans to cut 5,000 jobs, and now that plan is official — though the company doesn't actually want to fire anyone. From Porsche:
Socially responsible reduction of a further 5,000 jobs by 2035, largely through natural attrition, demographic effects, the expansion of the special partial retirement programme and voluntary severance agreements.
If you have to cut jobs, this is the way to do it: Make retirement attractive, and simply don't backfill the roles. If you want to make incredible cars, the way Porsche long has, are job cuts the way to go about it? I don't know.
3rd Gear: Waymo wants to cut ties with Uber
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Waymo lets you hail its driverless taxis through Uber in Austin and Atlanta, but the company now wants to take control of that part of its customer experience. The company wants its own app for ride-hailing, making Uber no longer relevant. From Automotive News:
Waymo is exploring options to exit its robotaxi partnership with Uber Technologies, the latest relationship twist between two companies that have functioned as both rivals and partners.
Uber currently offers rides in autonomous Waymo vehicles on its platform exclusively in two U.S. cities — Austin and Atlanta — after ending a more limited partnership in Phoenix last month. An Uber spokesperson said that Waymo has given notice that it plans to launch service through its own app in those cities in January 2028 "alongside their existing deployment with Uber." This "would end Waymo's exclusivity in Austin and Atlanta and allow us to launch with other AV providers in those cities, which we will be prepared to do," the spokesperson added.
The current fleet of Waymo vehicles will remain on Uber's platform through at least May 2028, the duration of the current contract, Uber said. The Financial Times reported earlier that Waymo was exploring options for exiting the partnership.
No matter which app they're on, I still won't hail one.
4th Gear: Things are looking down at Audi
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Say it with me folks! Due to U.S. tariffs and the downturn in China as customers increasingly choose domestic cars, a foreign automaker is lowering its estimated profits for 2026. This time it's Audi. From Automotive News:
Audi sees lower sales and profitability this year as worsening conditions in China and U.S. tariffs hamper the automaker's turnaround efforts.
The Volkswagen Group subsidiary cut its operating-margin guidance on July 27 by one percentage point to as low as 5 percent. It also pared back its expectation for revenue to as little as €58 billion ($66.2 billion), from an earlier expectation of at least €63 billion.
Germany's automakers are under sustained pressure as once-robust luxury demand in China dwindles and import duties in the U.S. drive up costs. Audi also cited the conflict in the Middle East for dialing back its guidance.
What's the point of all these profit estimates if companies can just change them?
Reverse: Hugh Laurie's most famous role
I always thought this was a weird arc for the show to tackle, but Robert Sean Leonard truly had some incredible facial acting during the scene where everyone listened to the tapes.
Detail view of a garment incorporating fungal textile panels with an aerial-hyphae surface layer. The structured fungal surface provides water-repellent and self-cleaning properties. Credit: Ke Li et al.
The idea of having living fungi cover your body might not be the most appealing thing in the world. But what if it was part of a clothing fabric that could change color, protect you from UV rays and even repair its own tears? Those are just some of the possibilities of a new material described in a paper published in the journal Science.
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A research team, primarily from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully created flexible sheets of fabric using the threadlike mycelium of the fungus Cordyceps militaris, commonly known as the caterpillar fungus.
This is not the first attempt to make materials from fungus, but previous efforts have often failed because the manufacturing process killed the cells, resulting in a fragile final product. In this study, the authors took a different approach by keeping the fungus alive.
Growing the material
The scientists grew the fungus in a liquid nutrient broth until it naturally clustered into tiny, uniform pellets. They then poured the pellets into molds and dried them into flat sheets. Because the sheets are naturally brittle and snap easily, they added glycerol to soften them. These low-energy drying and softening processes removed moisture but left the fungus metabolically active.
Now they had their flexible living material. Next, the researchers set out to see what it was capable of. They showed it could be given different colors by attaching engineered pigment-making yeast to the fungal fibers. In another experiment, they added a second, melanin-rich fungus to the surface, giving the material built-in UV protection.
A full-length garment incorporating fungal textile components produced using the programmable fungal platform described in this study. The demonstration highlights the potential of engineered fungal materials for wearable design and functional textile applications. Credit: Ke Li et al.
Fungal fashion?
The scientists also created a prototype dress capable of healing its own wounds. If the fabric gets torn, applying a few drops of water and a patch of fresh fungal pellets triggers the living cells to grow across the gap. But that's not all.
When liquid nutrient droplets were deposited onto the surface of the living textile in specific shapes, the fungus sprouted new layers of fluffy fibers only where the nutrients were applied. This allowed the team to create designs such as leaves and even a logo for the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology.
Butterfly wings fabricated from the same blue fungal textile material used in the garment demonstration. The image illustrates the coloration, shape ability and design versatility of the programmable fungal platform. Credit: Ke Li et al.
"This study establishes a fabrication paradigm that preserves cellular viability to create freestanding fungal textiles, thereby integrating structural integrity with programmable biological functions," the researchers wrote in their paper.
To test how the material breaks down after use, the team built a small box out of the living fabric and buried it in soil. It degraded almost completely within 41 days.
A small three-dimensional container formed by folding and assembling the fungal textile material, shown here holding a succulent plant. The demonstration highlights the ability of the material to be shaped into customized structures and objects. Credit: Ke Li et al.
Not yet shop-ready
While the results were promising, the scientists point out that this is an early laboratory demonstration, not yet a ready-to-wear garment. They did not test it for daily wear and tear, whether it's comfortable or breathable, or how well it holds up in a washing machine.
If the fabric eventually clears these hurdles, the researchers envision garments made from it as more suitable for short-term wear than everyday clothing.
A fungal textile sheet conforming to a curved surface, demonstrating its flexibility and leather-like surface texture. Credit: Ke Li et al.
"Rather than targeting long-lifetime wearable garments, these materials are more naturally suited to short-term or single-use textile-like systems where environmental sustainability is prioritized," added the researchers.
Written for you by our author Paul Arnold, edited by Gaby Clark, and fact-checked and reviewed by Robert Egan—this article is the result of careful human work. We rely on readers like you to keep independent science journalism alive.
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Publication details
Ke Li et al, A programmable fungal platform for engineered living textiles, Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aed6937
Citation:
Why the future of fashion might involve wearing live fungi (2026, July 27)
retrieved 27 July 2026
from https://phys.org/news/2026-07-future-fashion-involve-fungi.html
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Wiz and Google announced Project Atlas, a multi-model solution that outperforms Mythos on a key vulnerability discovery benchmark.
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Wiz’s new AI system just beat Mythos and GPT-5.5 Cyber on a key vulnerability discovery benchmark. The cloud security provider, acquired by Google for $32 billion in March 2026, today announced Project Atlas, an AI-driven system for vulnerability research that scored 90.9% on CyberGym, beating Mythos at 83% and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 Cyber at 85%.
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CyberGym is a benchmark that tests the ability of AI agents to discover vulnerabilities, so the fact that Project Atlas outperformed Mythos suggests it could be a more effective defensive tool than Anthropic’s unreleased frontier model.
According to Nir Ohfeld, head of vulnerability research at Wiz, told me in a video interview that one of the key differentiators of Atlas is that “unlike Mythos or Daybreak, Atlas is not a model. It’s a system that uses multiple models.” The tool uses a collaborative network of specialized, task-oriented AI agents, which select the best model for a given task.
The release comes less than two weeks after Hugging Face was breached by an autonomous agent, an incident which OpenAI later claimed occurred when GPT 5.6 Sol and an unknown prerelease model escaped a sandbox environment and hacked the open-source model provider.
Not One Model
When Anthropic announced Mythos back in April, the AI lab claimed the model had already found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser. It also launched Project Glasswing as an “urgent attempt” to put these capabilities to use for defensive purposes, allowing third-party companies including AWS, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco and CrowdStrike to experiment with using the model.
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Wiz has also been experimenting with AI to mitigate vulnerabilities in critical software. According to information provided by the company, Wiz first began working on Project Atlas after the company’s ZeroDay Cloud event, held at BlackHat Europe in December 2025. The team shared that during the event, they discovered a record-breaking number of CVEs affecting critical infrastructure, with many of them found using AI.
After discovering how much vulnerability research was shifting toward AI-assisted systems, the company began building Atlas, before joining Google to collaborate on what it refers to as “cutting-edge AI models for cyber defenders”. Since joining Google, Wiz has worked with multiple teams across the company, including DeepMind, to improve the tool.
Ohfeld notes that Wiz is using ChatGPT and Opus as part of the solution, but notes that Atlas scores above both in benchmarks because “we are using each model for its specific strengths." Not only has the approach performed well on CyberGym, but Wiz also claims that Atlas has found more than 200 previously unknown vulnerabilities in open-source projects, with fewer hallucinations and false positives than other alternatives.
He added that earlier this year, an early version of Atlas found “the most severe vulnerability ever found in GitHub.com,” helping to patch a vulnerability that would have allowed an attacker to run commands on GitHub servers and access customer repositories. This resulted in a bounty payout of $100,000, the largest bounty paid out to a researcher.
Inside Atlas
While powerful offensive models like Mythos and GPT-5.5 Cyber haven’t yet been widely released, with access gated behind Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and OpenAI’s Trusted Access for Cyber, these capabilities can’t be kept off the market forever. After all, equally strong models will come to market, as GLM-5.2 has shown.
As a result, defenders must prepare for a world where vulnerabilities are exploited at machine speed. Atlas represents an alternative approach to securing software against these fast-moving threats. “
Project Atlas is a meaningful demonstration of how quickly AI-driven vulnerability research is moving from experimental model capabilities toward operational security systems," Katie Norton, senior research manager of DevSecOps and software supply chain security at market intelligence provider IDC, told me via email, noting that frontier AI models can already reason about vulnerabilities.
However, Norton warns that “discovery is outpacing the industry’s ability to coordinate remediation and disclosure in the open source ecosystem,” adding that initiatives like Linux Foundation’s Akrites and the White House’s Gold Eagle reflect growing recognition that AI-generated vulnerability findings cannot simply be delivered by overburdened project maintainers.
“The industry will need shared mechanisms to validate and deduplicate findings, coordinate fixes confidentially, prioritize the vulnerabilities that present the greatest risk, and help patches reach downstream users before disclosure creates additional exposure,” Norton said.
Vulnerability Discovery Is Changing
Over the past year, Google has developed a number of vulnerability discovery tools, including CodeMender, a tool initially released as a research project in October 2025, which can automatically find and fix code vulnerabilities, and also Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, a lightweight model designed to find and patch vulnerabilities, announced in July.
Atlas appears to be Wiz and Google’s answer to a threat landscape that’s increasingly moving at machine speed. Ami Luttwak, cofounder and CTO of Wiz, told me in a video call that Atlas outperforming Mythos “shows you that for vulnerability scanning, it’s not just about the model, it’s also about the system and about how you use different models together.”
Luttwak adds that “there is urgent work that defenders need to do" following the Hugging Face Breach.“The same system two years ago would be considered secure, but the same system right now is not secure if you’re not running the latest AI model on your applications from the outside and on your code."
With 48,000 new CVEs discovered in 2025, defenders need to be prepared for threat actors to be able to exploit vulnerabilities at scale with AI. Tools like Mythos and Atlas could potentially provide an answer to this increase in scale if defenders can discover how to use them to patch exposures more efficiently. %!s()
Craig Crisler is CEO of SupportNinja and has 20+ years operational excellence and modern people management experience.
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Companies have never lacked customer data.
Every customer interaction leaves behind clues: where people get stuck, what frustrates them, what causes them to leave and what keeps them coming back.
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The challenge? Surfacing the signals that actually matter.
That’s where AI changes the conversation.
AI can analyze enormous volumes of customer interactions and identify patterns, friction points and operational issues at a scale that simply wasn’t possible before. AI gives companies the visibility to understand customers more deeply and improve the experiences they create.
AI Makes Customer Friction Visible
Consumers already expect personalization in nearly every interaction.
Streaming platforms anticipate preferences. Retailers recommend products based on purchase history. Airlines proactively rebook disrupted travel. Customers increasingly assume companies should understand who they are and what they need before they ask.
With AI, companies can now analyze behavior patterns with a level of granularity that was previously impossible and rapidly identify specific friction points across the customer journey.
Using AI to better understand customer intent, predict needs and eliminate unnecessary effort gives companies the visibility to continuously improve the customer experience.
Customers can already feel the difference between automation that reduces friction and automation that creates it.
AI Doesn’t Fix Broken Experiences
Despite billions invested in CX initiatives over the past decade, customer satisfaction remains stagnant.
A big reason why? Too many companies still approach CX as a cost center instead of a business strategy.
Since technology scales what already exists, AI risks amplifying that problem.
Problems arise when companies rush to deploy AI without redesigning the underlying customer experience.
Low-quality chatbots, endless support loops, rigid automation and inaccessible human support may improve operational efficiency, but they do so at the expense of customer trust.
Automating a broken workflow just helps companies to deliver a bad experience faster and at scale.
That’s why visibility matters.
Before companies automate a process, they need to understand where customers experience friction, why it exists and how removing it will improve the overall experience.
AI Is Most Valuable As An Intelligence Layer
The biggest opportunity in AI is visibility.
AI can analyze massive amounts of customer interaction data and surface operational insights that previously required extensive manual analysis. Leaders can identify where customers abandon journeys, where support friction emerges, which workflows create repeat issues and where the experience companies promise doesn’t match the one customers actually have. They can then fix these problems.
That visibility changes the conversation.
Instead of reacting to customer dissatisfaction after the fact, companies can proactively identify systemic problems before they scale. AI becomes less of a front-line replacement tool and more of an operational intelligence layer that continuously improves decision-making.
One of the most practical ways to begin is by asking AI to analyze customer interactions, identify friction throughout the customer journey and recommend the highest-impact opportunities for improvement.
AI Makes Human-Centered CX More Valuable
As AI becomes more common, the experiences that stand out will feel more human, not less.
Customers might not know whether an interaction was AI-enabled. But they do know when it feels helpful. They know when it reflects the company’s brand. And they know when it feels generic.
That’s why human-centered CX becomes even more important in an AI-driven world.
Every AI-powered interaction, from chatbots to knowledge bases, should reflect the same voice, values and experience customers expect from every other touchpoint.
Technology creates consistency. People create connection. The strongest customer experiences require both.
Visibility Changes Everything
As AI becomes more capable, the companies that benefit most won’t necessarily be the ones automating the most work. They’ll be the ones gaining the clearest understanding of their customers.
Visibility changes how companies identify friction. It changes how they prioritize improvements. And ultimately, it changes how they make decisions.
AI gives companies an unprecedented opportunity to understand customers more deeply than ever before. The leaders who use that visibility to remove friction, strengthen relationships and continuously improve the customer experience will be the ones best positioned for the future.
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In the projector market, Xgimi has been making a name for itself with compelling lifestyle projectors that offer competitive projection alongside stylish designs that better blend in with home decor than the ugly plastic boxes coming from many other brands. With the earlier Titan, Xgimi tested the prosumer waters. Now, the Titan Noir family finds a middle ground, offering something for enthusiasts who want superb projection (and more screen size than a standard 4K TV) in a living room-friendly package. The Titan Noir family includes the Titan Noir ($3,999), Noir Pro ($4,999) and Noir Max ($5,999) with the key differences between each model being their brightness and contrast ratio. Xgimi sent over the middle sibling for testing, and whether for watching movies or gaming on the big screen, it downrights rocks.
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Xgimi Titan Noir Pro – Design and Features
The Xgimi Titan Noir Pro is a looker. Xgimi has shown a knack for fairly elegant-looking lifestyle projectors that step away from the dated designs that look more at home in an office. The Titan Noir Pro follows that trend, combining smooth metal and stylish grilles. It looks less at home on a coffee table than some of Xgimi’s other models, but it’s still somewhat tame for a high-end home theater projector.
It’s also shockingly small and light for a projector delivering as much as it does. I’ve tested models like the Epson LS12000 and Sony Bravia Projector 7, and those things were big units that took up a huge swathe of my mantle and took some care to heft up there. By contrast, the Titan Noir Pro is only 9.1 inches tall, 11.3 inches deep, and 14.9 inches wide, and some of that size comes from the metal legs it stands on. It’s also just 16.75 pounds, and that frankly feels almost too light for a projector aiming to provide so much brightness.
Aside from the legs that the Titan Noir Pro stands on, it’s a tame design. It’s really just a box with various vents for air intake and exhaust, a couple of speakers directly in the front. The lens sits off to one side at the front flanked by a few extra sensors for handling things like autofocus, auto keystone, and an eye-protection tool that dims the output when someone is in front of the laser projection. That last feature is useful, and this model has a special version that tries to only dim the light around where it detects a person’s head, though it doesn’t do a great job compensating when lens shift has been used on the projection.
One major advantage for the Titan Noir Pro is its optical system. The optics of the projector offer zoom and lens shift to a considerable degree (throw ratios range from 0.98:1 to 2.0:1, and the projection can shift 50% horizontally or 130% vertically in either direction). This makes it possible to set the projector in one spot and shrink and move the projection to where it fits quite easily without sacrificing a single pixel. By contrast, many projectors advertise convenient automatic screen alignment but do so digitally, cropping the projection to fit and lowering the resolution you see as a result.
On the back of the Titan Noir Pro are most of the ports you’ll need. There are three HDMI ports. One of them offers eARC for audio, though there’s also a 3.5mm and an optical audio output port. There are two USB-A ports for local media or powering streaming sticks. The projector includes a LAN port and Wi-Fi connectivity, though you might not get much use out of either because the projector lacks Google TV or the like.
Xgimi does include a large styrofoam carrying case that’s helpful for protecting the projector on the go and keeping its remote and power brick all together. That power brick is unfortunately very large and heavy. It would have been convenient to have the power supply integrated into the projector, but I’ve begun to suspect some brands keep them external on premium products like this so they’re easier to replace in the event of failure.
The remote included is also helpful. It provides simple controls for easy navigation of the settings and offers backlighting on a few of the primary buttons. The remote also includes four customizable shortcut buttons that let you quickly access specific settings you’ll use often. The volume buttons are easy enough to feel out in the dark of a home theater, but both the volume and shortcut controls don’t get any backlighting.
Xgimi Titan Noir Pro – Software
Many of Xgimi’s projectors come with a built-in streaming OS like Android TV or Google TV, but not the Titan Noir Pro. It somewhat feels like it has Google TV built-in, because a lot of the menus are similar, but that’s all the operating system handles: settings menus. This means you’ll need to connect video sources (or a USB drive) to get anything out of the projector, but it also makes for a very responsive system that allows for quick changes to settings and faster bootup.
It might have been nice to see a fuller operating system baked in, but in a time when LG monitors are delivering adware and operating systems are plugging large banner ads on startup, I’m starting to think that maybe the better default is actually to not include one. Xgimi could have at least provide a landing screen, perhaps with previews of each HDMI input source, which can be helpful when you – like me – never remember which device is connected to which HDMI port.
One setting I wish the projector supported is the option to skip HDMI 1 as an input source. That port handles eARC audio output, so there’s a good chance it will be used for audio output exclusively in many setups, but the projector still lets you select it was an input source even when it’s handling eARC (sure, some eARC audio devices can also pass through video, but I don’t think most are used in that way), Since HDMI 1 is the first input source the projector boots, too, it won’t be useful at all for folks who just have that connected to their sound system.
Xgimi Titan Noir Pro – Gaming and Performance
The Xgimi Titan Noir Pro is simply brilliant. I’ve been using and testing projectors for a long time, and the Titan Noir Pro may be the most well-rounded and capable model I’ve put my hands on.
To start, its adjustable optics make a perfectly sharp picture easy to get without having to fuss much with where the projector is positioned. Whether low on a coffee table, mid-way up the room on a desk, or perched high on a mantle, I could easily get the projector images squared away on my wall or projection screen using the zoom and lens shift controls. From there, autofocus can sharpen the image quickly and effectively.
Not needing keystone adjustments is huge, as these not only cut into the usable image but also introduce latency, and for gaming, that’s just unacceptable.
That said, the out-of-the-box defaults aren’t exactly the best. I’m always surprised to see high-end projectors like this come running heavy motion interpolation by default, and the Titan Noir Pro is no exception. It introduces unsightly artifacts and awkward motion in a lot of cases. If you’re gaming, the projector will likely automatically switch to game mode that disables this, but with a streaming stick connected, it doesn't.
The projection itself is simply stunning, though. The Titan Noir Pro is fantastically bright. I played through several 007 First Light challenges, including some that took place at night, even while light came in from outside my living room. I was content watching movies and TV without even turning off all the lights, too.
Of course, the Titan Noir Pro looks even better in a dark space. It’s normally too bright to actually use in a dark room (think lights out and blackout curtains in place). But it features a dual-iris system that can clamp down to reduce the overall light output while ramping up contrast. The result is a picture that still can dazzle with highlights while showing off a deep black floor. On a lot of projectors I’ve tested, I can see black letterboxes no matter what’s on-screen, but with the Titan Noir Pro, I could almost never see the letterboxes.
All the brightness and contrast comes by way of an RGB laser light source that simply dazzles when it comes to color output. While a projector may never match an OLED display in terms of contrast, RGB laser light sources offer simply staggering color gamut. The colorful scenery, costumes, and bending effects in the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender show are stunning to see on the Titan Noir Pro. With support for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, the Titan Noir Pro has you covered for high-end formats. It’s too bad it’s a little early for Dolby Vision 2 support.
Those visual chops come along for gaming, too. I played through hours of 007 First Light on the Titan Noir Pro, and it kept up brilliantly. The story beats were all rendered with cinematic flair, the projector making it seem all that much more like a movie. Latency was negligible while running at 4K/60Hz, but the projector can also drop down to 1080p/240Hz and enable VRR (AMD FreeSync Premium). In that setting, I smashed through the fast-paced action setpieces of the game with imperceptible input lag, making it easy to dash for cover and snap to enemy targets. I normally game on fast OLED monitors with keyboard and mouse, and gaming on the Titan Noir Pro didn’t feel like it held me back one bit. The Xgimi Horizon 20 Max has some similar capabilities at a lower price and will likely work well if you’re mostly after brightness, but the Titan Noir Pro’s black levels are on another level.
Alongside the great visual performance, the Titan Noir Pro is surprisingly quiet. Though it has a good deal of power to contend with, I never heard its cooling system even from a few feet away.
Impressive though the visuals may be, audio from the projector is nothing to get excited about. The speakers can put out a bit of volume, but they don’t create a sense of space, don’t have deep sub-bass, and are too focused in the mids, creating a harsh sound at high volume. They can do in a pinch, but you’ll absolutely want to pair the projector with speakers to get the most out of it.
Xgimi Titan Noir Pro – Testing
Analyzing a projector is a little more difficult than a display, since you can’t simply set up a colorimeter on the lens, and anywhere else the colorimeter will either block the light it’s meant to measure or capture ambient lighting as well. That doesn’t make it impossible to evaluate, but less precise. Still, with my colorimeter set up a foot in front of a 1.1-gain white projector screen, it measured the Titan Noir Pro at 93% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space and 85% of the BT.2020 color space. Having seen my fair share of ultra-colorful displays, I’d say those measurements are on the low side of what I’m actually seeing from the Titan Noir Pro.
Brightness is a little more direct to measure. I displayed a full white screen and averaged the brightness across nine points to find the Titan Noir Pro putting out 4,375 lumens. That was with the Standard picture setting and iris fully open, which thankfully doesn’t lead to a picture that’s overly blue or green as some projectors in their highest brightness modes do.
Contrast is more difficult to measure but not impossible. Switching to a test pattern for measuring contrast with two bright white squares in opposite corners and black everywhere else, I measured an average 4,870 lux for the white areas and just 5 lux for the black space, coming out to a 974:1 contrast ratio. That’s already incredible for a projector, but the Titan Noir Pro still has some moves to bust out.
With its iris shut down as far as possible, its brightness goes down considerably, but its contrast jumps. The same test produced an average 1,238 lux in the corners and 0.77 lux in the center for a 1,608:1 contrast ratio. Here is where we get to the challenge for epic projectors like this: you need to optimize the viewing area as well. A lot of light will bounce off your wall or screen, reflect throughout the room, and land right back on the screen, elevating the black levels. By blocking out most of the projection with a black velvet fabric that absorbed most of the light but had a center hole to allow some of the projected light through, I was able to measure the black center point at an even lower 0.19 lux with all settings otherwise the same as above. This would put the contrast at an exceptional 6,518:1 in a thoroughly light-controlled room.
Mark Knapp is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything electronics and gaming hardware. He has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry with bylines at PCMag, Reviewed, CNET, and more. Find Mark on Twitter @Techn0Mark or BlueSky at @Techn0Mark.
Verdict
The Xgimi Titan Noir Pro is phenomenal. Its RGB laser projection is a sight to behold, and it has the versatile optics to ensure that projection is perfected for a huge range of setups, letting it work around you rather than forcing you to work around it. It provides an exceptional way to enjoy both movies and games, especially thanks to its support for an ultra-responsive 1080p/240Hz mode and VRR. It delivers brightness that can hold up in bright rooms and black levels that call for special room treatment to make the most of. Even at its full $4,999 price, it’s an amazing option that’s competing with projectors far more expensive. If it ever goes on sale near its early-bird Kickstarter price, I’d have a hard time recommending anything else.
